[Sca-cooks] Kirrilys treasure chest

[Olwen the Odd]

After having rifled through my bosses desk for a measuring device so I could
identify exactly how big 20 and 30 c is, I am duly impressed.  After adding
all the spices was it so spicy people may not want to eat it?  Although I
agree, these things _should_ be eaten.  I think I would have gone for whole
cloves for the nails.  Did you make little holes through the form and
tinfoil?  If not, at that thickness it may not dry completely from the
inside but you still have several days so it will probably be ok.  Take some
pictures now too so we can see the parts please.  I think if I won a bag of
money I would buy everyone a little webcam so we could see what the heck
everyone looks like and what they are doing.
Olwen
>In lists.sca.sca-cooks, you wrote:
> > All right.  I got forwarded a message from Kirrily and it said this;
> >
> >>And to my great shame, I've offered to sculpt a "treasure chest" from
> >>marzipan tomorrow night, with a bunch of people.  Should be, um,
> >>experimental.
>*sigh* ... is no mailing list sacred?  Heh.  Please note that this is

>OK.  We made the chest last night, or at least most of it.  It's made of
>about 6kg of marzipan (rough estimate), most of which is made brown by
>the addition of spices (ginger, cloves, nutmeg and LOTS of cinnamon).
>We had five people taking turns at the food processor, and we all took
>turns kneading it so that the spices were evenly distributed through the
>whole batch.
>
>We made a form for the chest, in two parts.  The base is a plain
>rectangular box, and the lid is half a cylinder.  Yes, the traditional
>"pirate chest" shape.  These were made of cardboard, then covered in
>aluminium foil.
>
>We put each of the forms open-side-down on a baking tray, then rolled
>the marzipan out into sheets about 1/2" thick, and placed them on each
>of the faces of the forms.  It was hard to make them stick together at
>the joins, so in some cases it was more a matter of draping the sheets
>over and leaving the seams somewhere in the middle of a side.  The gaps
>and cracks were smoothed with some mushy rosewatery marzipan.
>
>Then we took some plain marzipan (no spices, hence white) and laid
>straps across the top and sides of the chest, like those iron bands you
>see around treasure chests.  Little nails/rivets/whatever were made of
>tiny balls of the leftover brown marzipan.
>
>This is its current state, and it's drying and hardening in my kitchen
>right now.
>
>Between now and Saturday, I'm going to make some hinges and a lock from
>the white marzipan.  The chest will go to the event disassembled, be
>filled with stuff, then "locked" shut by sticking the lock and hinges to
>the chest with more marzipan or sugar paste or something.
>
>The overall dimensions of the chest are about 30cm wide by 30cm high by
>20cm deep.  The average thickness of the boards is about 1/2".  It's
>*heavy*... I lifted the lid this morning just to see how it was doing,
>and it was quite hard to manoeuvre.
>
>The interesting bit about this exercise was making it structurally
>sound.  I'm still worried that it might fall apart on the day, but I
>*think* it will be alright.  This is my first effort at marzipan
>sculpting (as opposed to just making little munchies out of it) so it's
>all a bit experimental.
>
>Incidentally, part of the plan is that it *should* be broken.  We want
>this thing eaten.  I *don't* want to have to take it home with me.

>Anyway, I'll get some pictures on Saturday when it's fully assembled.
>
>I should also give thanks and kudos to Wilhelm, Christabel, Charles and
>Reinhart who all showed up at my house on very short notice bearing
>kilograms of almonds, and helped with all the hard work.
>
>Yours,
>
>Katherine
>
>--
>Lady Katherine Rowberd (mka Kirrily "Skud" Robert)
>katherine at infotrope.net  http://infotrope.net/sca/
>Caldrithig, Skraeling Althing, Ealdormere
>"The rose is red, the leaves are grene, God save Elizabeth our Queene"
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>Sca-cooks mailing list
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